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Seveneves Summary ´ 104 Neal Stephenson à 4 Summary He intrepid pioneers until only a handful of survivors remainFive thousand years later their progeny – seven distinct races now three billion strong – embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time EarthA writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision Neal Stephe The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason I guess in order to indulge in a bit of world building one must destroy the world first Neal Stephenson is a genius A polymath with a wide range of interests he specializes in the big idea and the concrete the better In this way he carries forward the tradition of hard science fiction in which the best example is probably Arthur C Clarke Stephenson eschews FTL transportation time travel invading aliens or any of the other tropes of sci fi that cannot find a solid basis in contemporary science Instead he takes what is known adds what is possible and extrapolates to what could be His one concession to the unknown is his opening noted at top Although a theory or two are trotted out we never really learn what caused the moon to explode Consider it the MacGuffin of the novel the plot device that gets the action moving I guess breaking up isn t hard to do No exploding moon No story Why does it explode Doesn t matter The story is about what happens after The kernel around which the story nucleated was the space debris problem which I had been reading about both as a potential obstacle to the company s efforts and as a possible opportunity to do something useful in space by looking for ways to remediate it Some researchers had begun to express concern over the possibility that a collision between two pieces of debris might spawn a large number of fragments thereby increasing the probability of further collisions and further fragments producing a chain reaction that might put so much debris into low earth orbit as to create a barrier to future space exploration from Stephenson s siteAnd the story is a compelling one not so much in the sense of classic plot construction but in terms of how we get from the biggest OH CRAP moment in human history to something not guaranteed to soil pants Stephenson looks most attentively at the engineering details of what is involved in trying to salvage the human race once it is clear that the sky will go all to pieces that the term scorched earth will be applicable to all the land on Earth that the homeland will become a wasteland What hardware is necessary What is available What can go wrong How do we get from here to up there This is his gig He loves this stuff and it shows He also does a good job of portraying the ensuing struggles down below Who will be selected to survive How will they be picked How will the politics of the selection be handled What will the criteria be Ideas bang into other ideas which fracture and crash into even ideas and so on until you have an entire layer of nifty concept blanketing your brain World leaders make the big announcement of imminent doom at Crater Lake and yes it really is that blueI think Stephenson is optimistic than most and his presumptions about the level of on the ground conflict and pure lunacy are out of line with what we know about humans He gives only a little thought to deniers but in a country like the USA for example in which a uarter of the population does not believe in evolution in which the Republican base clings to beliefs that would make L Ron Hubbard scream for mercy in which Texas lunatics of both the tinfoil hat and elected variety I know no real difference there persuade themselves that a military exercise is a federal invasion there would be a lot going on denier wise than Stephenson projects All theoretical of course but do you really think that in the time remaining that birthers and those who believe the Apollo moon landing was a hoax would not make use of their considerable ordnance to make life even miserable for those with brainsNeal StephensonThe book is divided into three parts although it breaks down into smaller chapter chunks The first takes us from the initial event to the beginning of the end of Earth as we know it how humanity comes together or doesn t to preserve the species Part two takes on the final days of earth and a whole new world of conflict resolution or not setting the stage for Part three five thousand years on when through forces natural and engineer enhanced it is again possible to set foot on Mother Earth without singeing your toes The seven eves of the title refer to the last orbiting survivors whose reproductive capacity and DNA is used in an attempt to reconstitute the species and hopefully in time reclaim the original Mother shipThis inflatable harbinger has been deployed on the ISS for several years image from Smithsonian MagazineStephenson does action adventure pretty well and there is plenty of that here The end of the Earth is a compelling starting point and survival of the species concerns will keep you engaged Will this work Will that Who will live Who won t Character is not the thing in Neal Stephenson fiction His greatest talents lie elsewhere although it is definitely fun that he puts an avatar of Neal DeGrasse Tyson aboard The significance of character here is to consider personality differences and their social and genetic engineering implications Given people with certain traits how are they likely to behave and how will those behaviors help or harm the survivability of homo sap There is consideration of the concept of the state of nature What is natural for people How is that defined Pretty interesting stuff And there is plenty brain candy in SevenEves Not for you zombies go away On the hardware side how about harnessing asteroids and comets for raw materials Using robots of unexpectedly small dimensions for space mining Making orbiting environments in which humanity could survive and even expand How about some notions for terra forming not only lifeless space rocks butumTerra How about interesting ways of transporting people and materials between orbiting locations and between Earth and orbit How about some advanced notions for individual flight on planet Life sciences How about the challenges of food production in space Bio engineering is the biggest item here not only in selecting who gets to be among those sent into orbit to survive torch ageddon But in figuring out how the differences in people can be used to ensure survival of the species and looking at the results some of which are uite surprising Social science Well the science is a lot softer here but the politics of end times Earth and struggles for power among the spacers offer a look at elements of human nature that will be familiar Stephenson s optimism about our ability to think our way to actual survival is balanced by his recognition that we are as a species probably certifiable so will continue having at each other as long as there are others to go after An O Neill Cylinder from the outsideI am certain that those versed in contemporary sci fi will have recent comparisons to make but the work that I was most reminded of here is the Hugo Award winner for Best All Time Series Isaac Asimov s Foundation series In both a core of talented people a broader range of talent than in Stephenson s engineer and hard science oriented portrayal are brought together to preserve human culture in the face of an imminent catastrophe The specifics are uite different but they share a grandness of vision No psychohistory in SevenEves but the multi millennial look at humanity offers the opportunity for and realization of a great speculative vision There are some commonalities between SevenEves and another recent and very popular sci fi offering of the space variety The Martian Not in girth of course The Martian at a mere 384 pps could dock with and be pulled up on the side the 880 page SevenEves like a tender boat on a cruise ship Both deal with life and death scenarios in an airless void no not the US Congress although one deals with a single life in jeopardy while the other takes on a larger target But there is a heavy emphasis on tech in both Weir s wonderful story offered an engaging narrator and way too much detail on how he goes about attempting to survive while stranded on the red planet Stephenson writes about things that he finds interesting whether or not they clutter up the story with technical minutiae and at 880 pps trust me there is too much detail Hey his book his story He gets off on the details of mechanics and it is nowhere as mind numbing as an endless jeremiad by say John Galt but you may find yourself feeling a need to skim from time to time Purely an aside I think Chris Moore should write a novel about the Republican clown car of 2016 presidential candidates called The Galt in our Stars in which someone gets a life threatening disease and no one cares I wonder also how the very small number of remnant original eves is supposed to be able to provide the training their progeny will reuire to master all the skills reuired to sustain civilization I am sure there are many other details one could look at in considering the next five thousand or so years but it might take a few volumes SevenEves is a major contribution to contemporary science fiction It is engaging enough on a visceral level but it is crack not just for sci fi fans but for futurists scientists geneticists engineers and those concerned with how humanity will survive the challenges that lie ahead It is a big book not only in its physical bulk but in its ambition and range of interests Like the great works of his predecessors Asimov Clarke and other giants of science fiction the vision Stephenson has built in SevenEves will be read I expect as long as there are still people left alive whether on Earth or not Publication date Hardcover 51915 Paperback 51716This review first posted 51515In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25% from 20000 to 15000 characters In order to accommodate the text beyond that as of May 29 2020 I moved it to the comments section directly below well maybe not directly but somewhere around comment 10

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Seveneves Summary ´ 104 Neal Stephenson à 4 Summary Nson combines science philosophy technology psychology and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is at once extraordinary and eerily recognizable He explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring engrossing and altogether brillia I don t know what all those complainers are going on about As far as I can see I just got two novels for the price of one The first 23rds is all hard science fiction where science matters and the whole thing is tied together with plausibility The last third is pure unadulterated speculative fiction with damn fine worldbuilding and extrapolation from the first 23rdsLet me back up I can honestly say that I loved the gigantic erector set that was the first novel but I will admit that I wasn t head over heels in love with most of the characters and the few that I really liked were at least two dimensional This isn t a condemnation A lot had to be covered to get us from a happyish world through a blown up moon to a mad scramble to survive before the earth gets fireballed by our ex moon That means the International Space Station needs one hell of an upgrade A lot happens and it s tragic and heroic and beautiful I ve read a lot worse hard sf and when I say it it s not a condemnation either Hard sf is a lifestyle choice It s hard to do and successfully pull off a great story with great characters against say any other novel that doesn t care about consistency and scrupulous attention to detailMr Stephenson pulls it off and I m not just touting him because I m a lifelong fan of his writings I m saying the novel is solidNow on to the second novel A lot of people have a problem with this one going What the fuck Not me This is where we stop being grounded and we let our imaginations fly A lot can and will happen in 5000 years from the last hurrah of the plausible and likely end of humanitySo I see another tradition being followed one I like even than the strict master of hard sf I immediately got sucked into the imagery the action the curiosity the mystery and the unfolding of a brand new Earth I don t need to bring up all the greats who have done hopeful and optimistic futures although I will if anyone asks but Mr Stephenson has served up a beauty So much is bright and colorful about it and I m including the different human races the flying the landscape and the revelations about what the people find down there No spoilers but suffice to say there s always a way to bring conflict in even though the future is hopeful It was a sheer pleasure to explore and if the novel was NOT an extension of the first 23 I m pretty sure that most of the haters out there would have thought it was an interesting tale on par with any of the classics It s all about survival rebuilding and restoring genetic engineering massive scale engineering and the supremely toned down idea that love enduresIt was very touchingAll right I ll mention Brin It reminds me of the best of BrinSo that brings me back to the main uestion Should these two novels be considered one There s obviously ties throughout the second one but I ll be honest with you they could have been added long after the fact just so the second novel could see print That s a very negative way to view it in my opinion because I happened to love it for what it wasIs it a sign of the times that old style adventure novels set in the deep future can t get published any longer I hope not I d love to see assuming the stories still kick assBut to answer my own uestion Yes and No The first novel could easily have turned into an ultimate bummer The second novel could stand on its own Left to itself the first novel would have absolutely needed some sort of machinery of god or perhaps the triumphant return of the assholes who had raced to Mars It would have needed something anyway to satisfy the readers We aren t reading traditional fiction It wasn t a character study If the only way to give the reader what she wants is to give us a resolution that doubles as a whole second novel then I say Hell yesBecause at least this way I wouldn t have to wait a long time for a seuel when I wasn t satisfied with the first Can you imagine or do you remember when Hyperion came out and you got to the end and went Huh with no Fall of Hyperion to complete it It s the same deal although I ll be honest Hyperion is still better than this novel If you peeps haven t read it then do so It s still very high praise to be compared to it even in a lesser capacityOf course Neal Stephenson has a whole catalog of some of my absolute favorite reading list so I m amazingly biased hereWas this novel good You betcha Did it surprise Absolutely Do I recommend Yes for fans of the SFF genre with keen eyes and adjustable expectationsUpdate 42716This has been nominated for 2016 Hugo for best novelWhile I think it s pretty awesome in retrospect for the ideas the science and the rather epic scope of both saving the race in the first part of the novel and the far ish future ramifications in the last 23rds of the novel there were also wide swaths of boring info dumping too I might have gone hog wild all over this novel as the biggest contender for the Hugo otherwise but that might also have something to do with how much of a fanboy I am for the author Unfortunately this is isn t my first or even second choice for the Hugo winner for this year Good promise but the pacing was off

Seveneves Summary ´ 104 Neal Stephenson à 4 Summary The astounding new novel from the master of science fictionWhat would happen if the world were endingWhen a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere But unforeseen dangers threaten t Okay so the first two thirds of this was shaping up to be pretty much my favorite book ever like if someone had called me up and said okay we will get any author you name and they will write exactly the book you would like to read just give us a list of what you wantAnd then I gave them a list something like this and was like NEAL STEPHENSON PLEASE Someone succeeding through clever means APOCALYPSE Something grand being destroyed in an epic fashion People trapped together People working together toward a common goalto solve a problem The story builds from a sort of contrived situation or scenario eg uakers in space in this case the moon explodes People who are very good at what they do because they work hard at it Details about people s jobs Chosen familycommunity building People living proscribed lives eg military religious orders royalty astronauts FEMALE astronauts Discovering the hidden workings of something Being thrust into a position of power or responsibility and having to figure it outAnd it was exactly what I wanted At firstLet s just sayI should have asked for Ursula Le Guin to write the last part There were a lot of interesting cultural directions the story could have gone but it felt like they d sent an engineer to do an anthropologist s job